jeffpollard.net

Monday, yes it is

This weekend was awesome. Because it's Monday and things are busy and hectic, I don't really have a whole lot of time to explain in detail..but I give you the quick version: Jennifer got moved into her cool new house, we returned to Richmond, watched the race, and then spent the evening over at Mike & Lauren's house.

Yes, it's been a Monday morning, without a doubt. Even if I didn't know what day it was, I could tell you what day it was based on the way things have shaped up. To give you any indication, I went to leave the house this morning and didn't see my keys on the hook where they normally hang. And then it hit me that Olivia had grabbed my keys last night as we left for Mike & Lauren's and brought them with us. And so where was Olivia? Gone to work already. Yep, on the ONE DAY..EVER when she left for work before me..she had my keys with her. I should have known just to call work and tell them I wasn't coming in at that point.

Picking up

Work has been picking up lately, and it's kinda nice. The days seem to go by faster (most of them) and I can't believe that we're almost to May.

Has anyone heard the new Coldplay album? Is it any good? I've heard "Clocks" (thanks to "ER") and think it's great, but I'm curious if the rest of the album is that good.

Meet, Maintenance, and a Movie

Wow, what a blast of a weekend. I was able to rest, relax, and accomplish losts and lots of things I've been wanting to do for a long time.

Saturday marked the day of the first east coast CustomTacos.com meet in Fredericksburg. Planning for the big event had been brewing on the site forum for a couple of months and everyone was pretty excited about it. It appeared from the discussions online that we should have a turnout of around 6-8 people at the event. When we arrived at Loriella Park, we were pretty surprised to find well more than 6-8 people. In fact, we ended up having 13 trucks and well over 20 people there. It was better than I could have dreamed. And better yet, we had a great mix of trucks: 8 2wd (lowered or S-Runners) Tacomas and 5 4wd trucks.

The chemistry at the event was unbelievable. Throughout the day, I stood back and watched the people interact. Cross-pollenating, even. The lowered-truck guys checked out the big 4x4s and the 4x4 guys admired the craftsmenship on the 2wd trucks. Since everyone on the site has been interacting for months, I think everyone found it extremely easy to mesh with each other in person. I found myself smiling like a proud father numerous times.

So, the group grilled up some burgers and dogs, scarfed down some pasta salad and a ton of potato chips, then headed out to the parking lot to check out each other's rides. I got my first ride in a vehicle with air bags (Jake's bad-ass bagged double cab), and a glance at my future dream truck: a silver double cab with 3" of lift, 33" tires, and the perfect blend of customization and style).

Just to fill everyone in: I've had this image of the perfect next truck for me for a long time now. I dream about it. I daydream about it on slow days at work. THAT TRUCK pulled in the parking lot around 1:30PM Saturday. It was the silver double cab that I just mentioned above. I think Olivia was a little suprised at how excited I was about the truck, but when you've been dreaming of something for months and then finally see a perfect example of it in person...it's amazing. Here's a photo:

I know it only looks like a truck to most of you, but it represents a whole lot more than that to me. :)

Ok, the rest of the meet went really well. We all drove over to TGIFridays for some dinner and then parted ways.

Gizmo let us sleep in late this morning before he started meowing to wake us up. Once we finally got up and awake, we began a very productive day in which we changed the brake rotors and pads on her car, changed the oil in my truck, re-caulked the trim on the stairs and in the foyer, and a handful of other little things. Changing the front brakes on Olivia's car was about as hard as I had imagined. I think we both learned a great deal from the experience and I feel good knowing that I know how to do that now. In fact, Olivia did all of the work on the passenger side. Pretty impressive.

We just finished off the weekend relaxing and watching "One Hour Photo" with Robin Williams. Pretty good movie, I thought. And now I must mentally prepare myself for the week ahead. Should be an exciting one. More on that later in the week, hopefully.

Def Leppard rocked the house

The show last night was..awesome. I'd have to say that it's the best live performance from any band I've seen. We stopped in at the Roanoke Macados for some Johnny Dee and banana split eats and then headed home. Now, getting home at 3:30am wasn't quite as much fun as the show itself, but well worth it. Just like the 10-hour drive for the Bristol race a few weeks ago, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. And you know, sitting there last night waiting for the concert to start, I had to smile at how adventurous we've been as of late: driving 10 hours for a race, drive 6 hours for a concert. What's next? I don't know, but I really feel like I'm getting the most out of life right now. I'm not about to let a little thing like sleep, work, or driving get in the way of doing the things that I really want to do.

Today marks a special occasion: it's my Mom's birthday. Yep, today she turns...29. I guess that would make me a wee little boy then. But seriously, Happy Birthday Mom. :)

I'm pretty excited about being off work tomorrow. It's a shame that it looks like rain is in the forecast. I was hoping to get some more work done on my truck. I got my short shifter installed the other night (LOVE IT!) and am looking to dynomat my interior to deaden engine/road noise very soon. Having the entire day on Friday would have been the perfect day for pulling my interior apart, but it looks like mother nature has foiled my plans once again. How does she always know when I have stuff planned? I'll have my revenge one day. Oh yes. I will.

Camping Weekend

Our weekend away was just what the doctor ordered, as usual. It's just something about being so far away from everyday that is really relaxing. No telephone, no computer, no TV.

Actually, I have to retract my "no telephone" comment because I received two pretty cool calls on my cell phone while we were camping: The first was from my friend Mark, who was calling to tell me that his daughter had finally been born. Her name is Olivia and she and wife Julia are doing fine at home. For all of you wondering, the baby was not named after my Olivia, but rather after Julia's Grandmother. Congrats to Mark. She's a beautiful baby.

The second call was from my sister Jennifer. She's on the brink of making the giant leap forward to being a homeowner. She's been shopping around for mortgages and has her heart set on a nice duplex house just a few minutes away from her new job. It looks like things are all coming together for her, and I'm really happy for her.

On another note, work has been pretty busy as of late. Our test seed XServe finally arrived and so far it's performed quite well. What's really interesting is that after my initial tests, I've found our little XServe performing at almost the exact same level as our other test server machines. What really makes this interesting is that those server solutions are 2- and 3- times more expensive. That's price/performance.

Tomorrow night is the big Def Leppard concert that we've all been looking forward to for weeks. Should be a good time, even though we're going to be spending 5 or 6 hours driving tomorrow.

Coming Together

Things are finally coming together a little better for me. It's a good thing, cause I was starting to wonder if I was ever gonna get anything right.

Apparently we (Martin) didn't get something right with our latest two new business pitches. It looks like we're not going to be doing Pennzoil and it looks like we're losing the creative portion of the Alltel business. It's a shame because Alltel has been one of our largest clients for a long time. I guess the folks upstairs will just keep their heads up and keep plugging away for new business.

I picked up the correct weatherstrip for my new rear window this morning and I have an exchange initiated for my new headlights which were actually Ford Ranger units. It's no wonder they didn't fit when I tried installing them this past weekend. Luckily, the company I purchased them through didn't seem to have a problem with exchanging them for the correct units.

Not too much else exciting to talk about, really. I'm getting excited about this weekend's camping excursion. Hopefully it won't be too soggy.

Nightmare Over..maybe

I think my DNS nightmare with jeffpollard.net is finally over. With no help from OLM.net's tech support, I was able to SSH into my server and fix my own problems. It's a shame that all of these companies can't get good tech support people. And it's not just OLM.net because I've heard plenty of complaints from other people saying how un-helpful their company's support is. Is it really that hard to find goood help anymore? I mean, we have ECPI turning out graduates all the time, right?

Spent 4 hours getting my truck inspected yesterday. I arrived at Firestone promptly at 7am and walked out of there partially satisfied at around noon. They said my alignment was right on, but the truck still pulls to the right just slightly.

Congrats to my sister Jennifer for landing a full-time job at Agusta Medical Center in beautiful Fishersville, VA. Apparently, the hospital where she was working here in Richmond didn't need her anymore, so she took the proverbial lemons (no job), told the travel nurse company to hit the road, and has now landed this great full-time gig working exactly where she's wanted to work for some time now. I'm really happy for her and I know she'll be happy working there.

Bleh

Bleh. Monday. Rain. Can I go back to bed now?

Oh, by the way, don't try to email me @ [email protected] right now unless you like undeliverable messages. Hopefully I can get this DNS stuff sorted out in the next couple days. :(

Sproing

Nothing really too exciting to report, really. I switched both my checking and savings accounts over to new types of accounts yesterday morning, and am thinking about accepting a 0% interest credit card offer. Not that anyone in the world (except me) cares about those things.

House calls continue to be busy. I've had either a house call or meeting every night since last Monday. The problem with these latest house calls is that most of them are not easy fixes. Some of them I haven't even been able to solve quite yet, even though I've spent many hours troubleshooting the problem. It's frusterating. I feel like I'm losing my touch. Printers that won't print. OSX that won't install. Pdfs that can't be made. Wireless networks that drop in and out of existance. They're all taunting me. "Haha, Jeff. You can't fix us, you loser."

Still waiting for our test bunny Apple XServe to arrive here at work. We're evaluating new server solutions and I have been able to convince Apple to send me a demo XServe to beat & bang on (evaluate the performance of the product). We'll see how it stands up to server solutions from other major companies that we're considering, like Sun.

I think most of the others here in ITS aren't taking the XServe seriously. These are the folks that still question why we use Macs at all here at Martin. These are the folks who think the only solutions come from Redmond, WA. These are the folks who refer to Apple's operating system as "MAC".

I hope to seriously surprise them. I hope the XServe doesn't let me down.